Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

The 100 or so posts add up to about 300 pages of text. Categories and indexes on the web pages aren’t quite the right metaphor or substitute for random access. After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures.

Silicon Valley 209

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 209

Up and Running

MARCH 15, 2012

This offers both accountability and clarity on the big picture of the company, enabling employees to stay on the same page with one another. Andy McLoughlin of Huddle uses weekly video conference calls to keep all of his employees on the same page. Your expenses may be limited to a lap top, smartphone, and some software.

Software Review 79

Software Review Early Stage Employee Technical Review 79

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

To make life simpler, I'll take a page from George Carlin, who masterfully widdled down the Ten Commandments down to two simple rules. Let’s take sales and business development. When the product is early and still pivoting, these are kind of the same thing. Getting people to join your company is a key goal of early PR.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. One-Page Business Pitch Template.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Perhaps the team is working on a product that really isnt that great or useful. Maybe they never thought about product-market fit. Whatever your companys "fatal flaw" may be, you can likely avoid it in your own venture if you take some advice from people whove gone through the early startup phase before. Forgoing Simplicity.

Cofounder 111

Cofounder Technical Review Startup Software Review 111

Hearpreneur

JULY 10, 2017

After seeing the negative effects of dehydration, both me and my co-founder, Ming, decided that we want to spread knowledge about hydration and create a product that could help with this problem. Prior to starting Ozmo both Ming and I worked in a design house creating new and better products. That’s how Ozmo was born.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Hungary Software Review Cofounder 102

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Remember the whole controversy over Facebook’s Beacon product where a guy bought an engagement ring for his wife and it was published to a stream and ruined the surprise ? So my gut says this will be a youth-oriented product. The investment will be used for product development initiatives.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. If you dont have customers, a product, investors, or a board of directors, you can pretty much stay focused on just one thing at a time. See Four Myths about the Lean Startup or The lean startup.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 29, 2024

When I think about it, it's in the early stages of that entire co-founding team needs to be aligned on what these goals are and the fact that they do actually work toward that vision. When we get to, for example, the tactic on building a product roadmap that has to directly tie to the organization level goals.

Entrepreneur 53

Entrepreneur Cofounder Early Stage Artificial Inteligence 53

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Remember the story about IMVUs early encounter with Wired?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

If you’re building a startup, you’re likely to be in one of these two situations: Launching and selling a new product that nobody’s ever heard about, and probably don’t even know they need, or… Improving an existing product or service, which means that you’re going head on against someone with more traction, people, and money than you.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. Get in touch: Twitter Email Facebook Linkedin Additional resources Startup LessonsLearned, All Seasons : Every post from the blog, in one 600+ page PDF. Tickets are available now and include dinner. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

One of the topics that raised heated debate was whether I had conflated technical design with product design , because I made the admittedly counter-intuitive claim that sometimes good technical design actually leads to increased technical debt. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

BeyondVC

MAY 30, 2007

As an early stage investor and board member of several companies, I am fortunate to get the opportunity to work with some great entrepreneurs and also pattern match and observe trends, both good and bad, in early stage companies. Take the test – ask your key executives what the 3 key company goals are for the month?

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Startup Engineer Portfolio 60

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Investors, particularly those investing in early-stage startups, want to understand your vision. Product/market fit and traction. If you have “traction” in the form of early sales and customers, that’s even better. Beyond the typical sections , here are the most important things that investors want to see in your plan.

Business Plan 138

Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Exit Strategy 138

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

enabling you to expand on an already working business model), and if you’re in the extremely early stages of building your company, you still need to develop your product. Product development. Almost all of our leads come from Google, either directly to our landing page or through our blog.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Startup Forecast Channel 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

The Equity Kicker

JULY 16, 2015

Team structure in early stage ecommerce and marketplace companies is a function of manpower and skills necessary to build the company and the founder(s)’ skillset(s). First iteration of the product vision. Design and development of landing pages and prototypes. First iteration of company messaging.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce Burn Rate Early Stage Hiring 60

ConversionXL

JUNE 25, 2021

An effective product launch strategy helps you generate awareness, build intrigue, and validate your product positioning. The best product launches take into account the product lifecycle—understanding where it fits into the bigger picture, and how to transition through each phase. But it’s not a linear journey.

Product 96

Product Social Media Audience Software Review 96

OnlyOnce

MAY 13, 2013

But in my line of work, that acronym has come to mean something entirely different: Minimum Viable Product. The new way of doing a business plan is a really short series of hypotheses on a single page, then the time is spent de-risking the plan by systematically testing each element of it out. Book Short: Getting to MVP.

Lean 79

Lean Early Stage Agile Business Plan 79

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Google DevRel created a page of Google resources for startups – from the site’s description: “This site contains a selection of tools you will find useful when building, measuring, and enhancing your apps. Facebook Fan Pages.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders! In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product? They just call forth amazing products from the ether.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. Despite that, we were able to establish credibility, because we used those early numbers to demonstrate that our customers were getting real value from our product and, more importantly, that we understood how to build more of it.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

To clarify the discussion, let’s use a simpler model: Companies A and B both sell products with recurring monthly revenue, and both brought in $10,000 in revenue last month. Many more die that way than die because the product sucks or doesn’t have enough features or because they don’t have a staff designer.

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Product and Engineering. Product and Engineering. I was their first full-time engineering hire and I helped build out the team and set the agenda for product development. Anyone who wants to become a technical leader should strongly consider joining an early-stage company to get this experience. The Review.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Engineer Software Review Part-Time VPE 52

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

In regards to customer interviews, UserVoice gave these 7 examples , useful for any product manager: What do you think of this product? What annoys you about this product the most? How does or doesn’t this product solve problem X for you? Identify demand for new products or improvements to existing products.

Marketing 105

Marketing Conversion Design Customer 105

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Every product ultimately is satisfying a need in the customers who buy it or use it. Products that dont solve satisfy any need for any customers tend to die out quickly. The more painful curse for startups is the product that satisfies a need or solves a problem - but that problem is not very important. Thats an early adopter.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I own a website that EVERYONE gets excited about when I explain it, and then they love it when they log on… however, people who have never heard about it go to the site and don’t register, I know this is because my landing page is weak, any helpful hints to better my landing page? Building Product 2. a new art form?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

Redemption 127

Redemption Silicon Valley RSS California 127

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

It is interesting to see the emphasis that both Twitter and Quora have put on product design, not just engineering. Sure, you can create a product, but it takes someone who can sell something that doesn't exist yet to people who don't know if they need or want it, to drive revenue.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107